


After Rainfall

by woollen_pharaohs



Series: Continuations of beautiful indie films [4]
Category: Midnight Special (2016)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, my thirst for michael shannon was so strong i just had to write this ok, rated T because there's a sex scene depending on how you look at it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 14:39:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13953735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woollen_pharaohs/pseuds/woollen_pharaohs
Summary: What happens when Roy is in prison, and how he finds Lucas again.(This fic is related toThe Smoke, The Feeling, but it is not necessary to have read it in order to read this one.)





	After Rainfall

**i.**

The start of every day begins with metal in his jaw. The guards crank open the door and escort Roy to the courtyard. Scientists apply pads to Roy’s head and connect wires to machines that blip throughout the day and half the night, until the guards take him back to his isolated cell. Roy got used to a life like this on the ranch, when the reverend appointed himself father of Alton and locked Roy up. He could only see Alton at church when Calvin deemed Alton well enough to attend.  

That went on for two years.

It’s been… Roy has lost count how long it’s been. He’s used to the timelessness of his life, despite the schedules others force him to adhere to. Forced times to wake up, eat, bathe, sit and when to go back to sleep. Those ways to keep track of the passage of time don’t mean anything to him anymore. He’s just living, and breathing, and hoping that the people he loves are safe and sound.

 

**ii.**

Eventually the scientists realise that they aren’t going to get anything out of Roy. For the last time, they peel off the pads and coil up the wires and switch off the machines. They let him join the general population of the prison, and rarely ask him to sit anymore. It's not freeing. He knows that there are other forms of surveillance less intrusive than what he has become accustomed to; there are cameras mounted in every room, and where there aren’t cameras, there are eyes of guards and prisoners alike.

He doesn’t mind being watched, knowing that there are otherworldly forces beyond what the human eye can see, who are watching him too. Alton, in the world above theirs.

He continues on as before, doing his time, through time. He wakes when he's told to wake, sits when he's asked to sit, eats when he’s asked to eat, sleeps when he’s shown a bed. It’s only some time after that he discovers that Lucas is in prison with him.

 

**iii.**

Roy hears Lucas’ voice first. Not a word, a sound. A gruff of annoyance, then, a clatter of the cafeteria tray when Lucas sits on the empty bench opposite Roy.

“Fancy seein’ you here,” Lucas grunts.

Roy stares at his sloppy food. Cold. Concrete skyscrapers cycle in his peripheral vision, clipping through the little windows fitted near the ceiling of the cafeteria.

Lucas scrapes his plastic fork over the bottom of the tray as he eats. “Heard they let you out of solitary a few months back. D’you know how long it took me to get on the same lunch schedule as you?”

Roy looks up. His eyes skate over Lucas’ beige prison garb, long sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a stained white t-shirt visible in the V of the long sleeve. Lucas’ neck muscles are tight, like he’s clenching his jaw.

“Hope they’ve been treating you alright,” Lucas murmurs, the tension in his throat no less.

Roy raises his eyes higher, over Lucas’ busted lips, and cradles the slope of Lucas’ brows in his vision. His brows cast shadows over where the leathery backs of whales creep beneath the surface of the ocean. Quiet beings with so much to give, so much heart and passion all knotted within them, and busy behind blue eyes.

“...Lucas.”

Lucas adjusts in his seat, pulls his hands around to the furthest side of the tray and nudges forward so that his knuckles graze Roy’s. Roy watches the whole time, his chest rising and falling, and he turns his fingers over the tops of Lucas’ hands. Feather light over skin worn rough from the crashing seas beneath, and the swarming chaos above.

“Keep your hands to yourselves, inmates!” A guard hollers.

Lucas sags backwards, drawing his hands down to his lap. He shakes his head, and lets out a surprised laugh before looking back at Roy, but Roy’s gone. Lodged in a flashback to when they were together, ten years ago. Before he held Alton in his arms, and before Sarah held his hands and shared a feeling with him. To when he was with Lucas, lying in his arms, to when he would feel the curves in Lucas’ cheekbones when they kissed, to when they had a life together that Roy abandoned for a sense of purpose.

“I’m doing double dish duty on top of landscaping,” Lucas says conversationally, “What have they got you doing?”

Lucas’ touch had been electrifying, it had sparked him in and out of these memories like visions. It had felt like another decade had passed since he last saw Lucas on that strip of road. Blood dripping out of his forehead, windshield glass in his collar. The concrete structures sifting through the air as weightless as windmills.

So much time spent in timelessness… and Lucas has been here the whole time.

Lucas picks up his plastic fork and tries again. “What work have you got?” When Roy doesn’t answer, Lucas says, “Roy,” the name wrought out of his throat like he's dredging out the last of the shattered glass, “Hey.”

Lucas covers Roy’s hand with his. The guard’s attention away. Other prisoner’s wary. But it only takes a second to jolt Roy back into reality.

“Sorry - I’m… I haven’t been doing anything.”

Lucas takes his hand back before the guard can yell at him and picks up his fork. “Library work huh?”

“No.” Roy grips his tray. “I go to sit.”

Lucas bursts out laughing. “No wonder I couldn’t find where they had you stationed! No one’s job is to sit around but the warden’s!”

“Keep your voice down!” Another guard yells, kicking the leg of Lucas’ chair as he walks passed.

Lucas scowls, turns back to Roy with the life and the darkness of oceans behind his eyes. “Roy, we need to start aligning our schedules. We’re gonna figure out a way to get out of here.”

“We’re not getting out of here,” Roy says quietly.

“I know, I know, there’s no hope for lawyers representing prisoners involved in top secret cases. There are other ways out. I’ve been networking…”

Roy’s lived so long without hope… just living. Just breathing… hoping for others, but not for himself. He sees Lucas’ blue eyes alight with a plan to find freedom, and it reminds him of Sarah. Of how she gave him hope. Gave him a child to love, and to set free. A part of him knew that Sarah had been right. That taking Alton to where he needed to go would mean it’s the last they'll see of him. The last he’ll be able to hold his little boy in his arms. But he knew he was going to be able to find Alton again in unconventional ways. See his soul glinting in the twilight, and in the periphery behind Lucas as Alton, and those beings, allow Lucas to reunite with Roy once more. As they are meant to.

 

**iv.**

They work, and eat and sleep and work. And see each other in pockets of time. At lunch, in the hallways, outside windows and behind bars. And they’re no closer to escape, until one day, a storm fills the pens in the prison. Wets the hallways and cuts the power.

Roy’s in the airbridge between section H and G, standing in the tunnel that’s riddled with holes woven by the twisted wire. The stormwater drenches him. A cold touch to his bones.

“Roy!”

A flush of heat through his body. Below, he watches a river of rainwater slam against the fence perimeter and wash away a section of fencing which easily tears out of loose soil. He sees men in beige bolt out into the river, chase it down, get swept away and out of sight.

“Roy! Get down here!”

He shakes himself. Searches for the owner of the voice and spots Lucas down below in the courtyard where water rushes at the slimming banks by his feet.

They hold each other’s gaze. Blue lightning bolts across the tumultuous sky. A concrete tower ignites from electrocution, and begins to crumble.

 

**v.**

The rain falls steady outside. Water gushes down the gutters and drips when the rain ceases. Wind rustles through leaves, and sparkles when the storm is distant.

He’s shivering in want.

In the angles of the window, some evenings, Roy can see his large tree bathed in the golden glow of the light he left lit on the porch. A breath of wind shakes the tree, makes it writhe and wrinkle away from the touch.

Polo shirts and shorts in the summer. Thick denim jacket and brown trousers in winter. Dirt stains that won’t come off. He chops wood with a cat prowling for a bird on the lawn. Then he showers in hot water, and lays in Lucas’ arms. A conversation relayed between their eyes. Hot breaths between their lips, the weight of love coiled in their limbs, slotting and sliding together, wetted by the oceans webbing in their hands and meeting at river mouths that burst around thick trunks.

Alton didn’t let them see the future. He shared visions, yes, but he shared what it was like in another world, not Roy’s. He shared a feeling, like comfort. Like everything was going to be okay. The warmth Sarah expressed to him was enough to make him believe. The visions Alton showed Lucas were enough to let him forgive. Alton couldn’t have known, but Roy believes it was Alton who helped them. An invisible hand that helped them escape prison and keeps them safe. Lets them love each other again as time goes on.


End file.
